There are two petitions circling that call to have, ahem, Cardinal Farrell’s name removed from both the Holy Trinity Seminary student center and the Cardinal Farrell Center on the UD campus (which is confusing, since the seminary and UD are practically co-located). This is the one for removing Farrell’s name from UD.

Why should his name be removed? Well, for starters, how about his very close proximity to two of the most hideous abuse scandals in the history of the Church?

According to Cardinal Farrell, he was in the middle of two massive scandals, but somehow suspected nothing. By his own testimony, he is either a lying prelate or a clueless one. If a liar, Kevin Farrell is complicit in the sexual abuse of minors and the violation of ordination vows. These evils were rampant at Holy Trinity Seminary just a few decades ago; why should the seminary honor those who enable them today?

Because he lacks any basic qualification to merit the honor of a seminary building, and especially in light of his lack of character as shown by these scandals, we call on the administration of Holy Trinity Seminary to refrain from naming the future activity center after him. We propose naming the building after one more worthy, such as a saint who stands as a model for priests, or a virtuous person who has done good for the seminary. Until a new name is chosen, we refuse to honor Kevin Farrell and shall not contribute any funds towards the construction of this building.

Here’s another reason – then Bishop Farrell, while here in Dallas, was essentially never, ever, known to pray. Think about that.

All the details are here at the Catholic Action Summit website. This is a conference in support of the Church’s constant belief regarding marriage and the family. Presenters include Cardinal Raymond Burke, John-Henry Westen, Dr. Gianna Molla (daughter of the Saint), Austin Ruse, Fr. John Trigilio (who I have always enjoyed), and several others. Several of the attendees have been vocal critics of the Bergoglian regime in Rome, and quite rightly so, but this will not be a “traditional” conference, per se‘. Tix are pretty expensive, $149 per adult if you buy before Sept. 16 and $199 from then on. Children 15 and under are $55. The price does include 4 meals, breakfast and lunch on Sat/Sun.

If anyone attended last year’s event please leave a comment describing what you thought of it, especially relevant to the price. Compared to the Our Lady’s Advocates conference, it’s quite a bit more, but perhaps past attendees can make a great case for attending this Catholic Action Summit.

……at least, if the overwhelmingly white, and leftist, Twitter-approved “blue check mark mafia” are any indication. I like Carl Benjamin less and less due to his silly and childish atheism (really, there can be serious reasons for atheism, but his is culturally absorbed and simplistic, and is of the same kind of culturally-dictated thinking that his progressive opponents engage in all the time. In Britain today, it’s much more culturally acceptable and rewarding to be an atheist than a Christian), but he provides a valuable service here, publicizing a Twitter account that highlights all the reflexive anti-white racism of the unhinged Left. Not that I’m on Twitter, or Facebook, for that matter – Google/the NSA have more than enough info about me already from my phone, which I am strongly considering ditching for a dumb model – but this is where more and more of the cultural conversation, the erstwhile public space, takes place, mostly for ill, but that’s where we’re at:

I’ve had another post pending regarding the persecution of conservative voices out of major social media platforms and how that ties in with the movie “Code 46,” but I haven’t got a prayer of finishing that today. So it will probably go in the trash as too dated as another dozen or more attempted posts have gone over the past several months.

I do have some thoughts on Francis, hyper-montanism, and the crisis in the Church, but that will have to wait for next week, if ever.

Dr. Peter Kwasniewski of Wyoming Catholic College normally writes in measured, scholarly tones, always providing insightful commentary but not usually with a lot of polemic. But he let fly with both barrels in a recent post at One Peter Five, from which I excerpt extensively below (admittedly, he claims to be quoting another, but approvingly). Hilary White has been waging a vitriolic war of words against the tyranny of the Bergoglian papacy, and rightly so, for years. She continues her excellent work with another strong piece also at One Peter Five. I tie the two together and try to add a few contributions of my own, paltry though they are.

First up, Dr. K – no matter how bad you think the corruption/rot/heresy/perversion in the Church is, it’s almost certainly much, much worse, and will get still more so:

Most commentators do not begin to understand the true nature of the problem.

The ring of criminal Nancy Boys is the same ring that has been sedulously working for decades to undermine the integrity of the doctrinal, moral, sacramental, liturgical Church. These men – McCarrick, McElroy, Wuerl, O’Malley, Mahony, Cupich, Tobin, Farrell, Lynch, Weakland, Paglia, Maradiaga, their lovable mouthpiece James Martin, Thomas Rosica, and far too many others, including ones who have passed on to their eternal fate, such as Lyons, Boland, Brom – are the same ones who have destabilized and adulterated catechesis, theology, liturgy, and most obviously the Church’s commitment to the unchanging moral law, as we saw in the Amoris Laetitia debacle and all that surrounded and succeeded it. We must connect the dots and not pretend to be shocked when we see, for example, attempts under way to “re-interpret” Humanae Vitae through a false teaching on conscience, or to do away with clerical celibacy, or to introduce female deacons.

To treat the sins of this ring of conspirators as nothing more than a recrudescence of the sex scandals of the past would be to lose sight of their real enormity. These are not just men of bad moral character; they are apostates, and they are trying to remake the Church in the image of their own apostasy. The Church has been smashed up in front of our eyes in slow motion for decades and few can even begin to admit that we are now faced with a Church in actual smithereens. The Nancy Boys have conducted their campaign of demolition with a kind of imperial sway. It is not this or that aspect of the Church that is corrupt; the rot is now everywhere. It is a rot on which the McCarrick Ring still sups, like maggots feasting on a corpse. For this reason, to hear well meaning people say Bergoglio must impanel some investigative body to set things right is Alice in Wonderland lunacy. It’s like putting Himmler in charge of Nuremberg.

We do not need bishops engaging in public penance (although it’s a good idea for their souls and long overdue); we do not need episcopal investigations; we do not need new procedures and new policies. These are all cries for exculpation. Bishops beating their breasts and then going back to doing nothing about the manifest apostasy at the very heart of the Church will not solve matters. We need the apostates [and those who have enabled and covered for them, and also all the sodomites] identified, denounced, and removed. [And so the Church in the US would probably lose 90+% of its clergy at a shot, if all the moral perverts and manifest heretics were, by some miracle, removed from office. Are we prepared for that? I can really only speak to the Church in the US, but I understand that in many Western countries, and Latin America, the problem is even worse. There might not even be 1% of the active priests who are not heretical, addicted to horrifically immoral sin, or both]We need a reaffirmation of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Faith. To clean up this mess, we have to clean up more than the scandal of homosexuality, with all of its attendant horrors. We have to denounce and reject the apostasy that powerful and influential homosexuals and their friends have insinuated into the Church over decades………

……….It is a package deal. This, above all, is what people need to see. The moral depravity, the doctrinal heresy, the liturgical devastation – all of it goes together. If you have the courage to follow each thread, you will find that any attack on one part of the Church, one aspect of her life, one component of her tradition, already is or will soon be bound up with an attack on the other parts, too. The real “seamless garment” is Catholicism taken in its totality. Either you have the whole or you can’t have any…….

……..The difference with the clerical sodomites is that they become professional apostates. It is not enough for them not to believe in the sacraments; they must make others not believe in them as well. They will not stop twisting and mutilating the Church until she blesses their sin, along with many other sins. To achieve their goals, they must wreak havoc on every last aspect of the Church. This is what the faithful must stop – forget about the contemptible bureaucracy of the USCCB with its well heeled lawyers and slick marketeers. We begin to stop the havoc by calling its source by its real name. McCarrick was not just a predatory sodomite, but an apostate, and all of his “brother bishops” who knew about the double life and still got their pictures taken with him [or concelebrated with him, because there is a school of theological thought that says that concelebration is a tacit admission of doctrinal conformity with the celebrant, which is one of many reasons why traditional priests abhor the practice and refuse to condone it], laughing away at the latest wool pulled over the people’s eyes – you know, the ones who are putting out videos about how unfortunate this is, what a mess, and, you know, it isn’t as bad as people are making it out to be – these are all apostates, too. They’re company men with company cars, driving in a long line to their own burials at the ecumenical cemetery…………

………The Catholic Church is being rocked to its foundations by a scandal of Modernist apostasy of staggering proportions. We are in “2+2 = 5” territory, and the “conservative” apologists have no real response to that, which is why they insist on treating the McCarrick business as a sex scandal. They are more concerned about a mendacious, ramshackle, unaccountable episcopate than they are about the deposit of the faith under daily assault, as it has been ever since the progressive European bishops maneuvered into control of the Second Vatican Council, strewing ambiguities and half-truths in its documents and dominating its implementation, particularly in the liturgical sphere – all of which has led us straight into the cesspool of iniquity and heresy in which we are stewing.

But where does this go? What do they ultimately want? That is what Miss White tells us, and very clearly, almost prophetically, to extend her analogy:

What is the Bergoglian Paradigm about? It is about a new religion, and specifically a religion that falsifies, negates, contradicts, denies, and abominates the old religion. It is about the complete reversal of all that God has taught mankind, not only since the dawn of the Christian era, but from the beginning. If the Bergoglian Negation is true, then everything we have believed, not for 2,000 years, but since the time of Abraham, indeed since the time of the promise to Eve, is false. Every miracle, every promise, every covenant, every expression of love of God for us was all a lie……….

…….Why? Because the Bergoglians tell us not to repent, not to turn away from sin. They tell us that God will not save, will not lend you strength. They tell us even that sin is good. It is a counsel of despair; it tells you that you are helpless in your sins, that no God is coming to save you, that His grace is insufficient for you, that you are ensnared in depravity and can never escape, never hope for holiness, never hope for salvation.

And that only humanity, only their leftism, only the communist utopia, can “save” you, and that you may as well have as much “pleasure” in this life as possible, as this is the only one there is. That is what these men have been telling themselves, every day and practically every minute, for decades now. Misery loves company. They want to drag everyone down to their level, ESPECIALLY those who have, by some miracle, managed to maintain true Faith over the past several insanely painful decades.

But these kinds of men have come before, and God has defeated them. The Catholic Church has appeared broken and defeated, only to experience miraculous turnarounds. In the mid-11th century, the popes had been under the thumb – to the point of being named/appointed and even in some sense “consecrated” by them – of the Roman “nobility” and “Holy” Roman Emperor for 250 years. This is the period when a 16 yo boy was appointed pope and proceeded to live a most scandalous and profligate life, dying of acute cirrhosis when he was only 24 or so. Most priests and bishops were 2nd, 3rd, or 5th sons of petty lords who only used their positions as clergy to enrich themselves while they married, fornicated, drank, engaged in piracy and brigandage, and left the people to starve, spiritually. Only here and there were there isolated locations where the Faith was actually maintained and practiced, and those very few. But it was enough. God managed to get a man, Hildebrand, appointed as St. Gregory VII and the entire enterprise, the whole edifice, was turned around in just 2-3 decades. Problems remained, but the Church of the 12th and 13th centuries – admitted by all as the most Catholic in history – was created immediately after these periods of near total collapse and disaster.

I say that so people do not become hopeless, but at the same time, I feel, for a variety of reasons, that the current crisis/mass apostasy is the most dangerous, yet, because it is the most efficient, systematic, and organized the Church has yet faced. I think it is far more organized than anyone knows. And it is not done, yet. Even should we, by some small stroke of God’s will, be freed of Bergoglio, his replacement may well be worse. This may go on for many decades to come, until they believe they have sucked the Church dry of all benefit it could provide them, or some great saintly reformer comes along to start the process of setting things right.

I know these are not exactly huge revelations to this crowd. Heretics took over the human aspect of the Church, including the clergy, perhaps as divine retribution for the Church’s institutional embrace of usury via the IOR/Vatican Bank*. But keep the Faith. Find the best Mass/priest you can and cling to them with all your might. As Bear says, nail your foot to the floor if you have to. Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus still applies, even though the institutional Church has not only lost its mind but appears demonically possessed. It is still Christ’s Church and that is still His Body in the Blessed Sacrament. Plus, as they say, living good is the best revenge, well, staying holy and keeping faith is the best way to deny this evil cohort the victory they desire.

*-has anyone else seen/heard this claim, that Vatican Bank/IOR activities have constituted sin of usury since the concordat with Mussolini in 1929, which transformed the Holy See from debtor mini-state to extremely wealthy and influential state? Didn’t Malachi Martin argue this, that the Vatican had prior to Pius XI always held aloof from global financial markets due to refusal to charge interest for money or accept interest on money (as these constituted grave sins of usury, even worse than murder) and was thus impoverished from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries, but that the concordat and subsequent creation of the Vatican Bank rendered the Vatican spectacularly wealthy but required they engage in usurious practices? And this is where all the trouble really started, as it instantly caused rapidly spreading corruption? Thoughts? I read the theory in this book, which seems to rely quite a bit on Malachi Martin.

Is your faith suffering under Francis? Feeling cold, more disconnected from grace and the Spirit? I must admit, I have felt this a great deal over the past 12-18 months. Francis is a sopping wet asbestos blanket for the fire of faith. He’s a nightmare of worldliness, selfishness, error and people-pleasing.

But this sermon is a good antidote to Francis’ destructive effects. I really enjoyed listening to Padre Pelegrino (who has been featured on this blog before), and I hope you will, too:

It is good to remember, that just keeping the Faith is a form of triumph. It’s certainly a personal one, and one we should hope we can share with our family and friends, as well. But I still think, with regard to the previous post, that in this time of intense crisis we need to think beyond just ourselves, our family, and even our parish, and for the millions upon millions of souls who will fall out of the Faith and very likely into an eternity in hell due to the errors being promoted by Francis and his cohort of revolutionaries.

In addition to work and just life generally, another thing that kept me from blogging for the past month or so was the process of selling my truck of almost 16 years and buying a new one. It took much longer than I hoped but I finally did sell my faithful – until the last 6-8 months – former truck and get a new one. And I switched teams in the process:

After 31 years of driving nothing but Chevy’s I got a Ford. I just can’t stand what the General has done with his trucks the last two generations (and now 3 with the 2019s coming out).

Years ago, Father Michael Rodriguez first came to notoriety outside the El Paso area through testimony he gave to the El Paso City Council against an administrative act – over and above the expressed will of the voters – to extend spousal benefits to same-sex “partners” of city employees. This was after voters had explicitly rejected such extension, in spite of the fact that the very progressive diocesan administration and, it must be said, perverse clergy of the Diocese of El Paso virtually unanimously supported the measure, at least tacitly.

Father Rodriguez was on the receiving end of a very nasty, calumniating attack by an El Paso councilman after he had already given his witness. The councilman was Beto O’Rourke, who is now running for US Senate against Ted Cruz. Judging by the number of yard signs, bumper stickers, and other endorsements I’ve seen around, O’Rourke probably poses the biggest threat to a Republican senatorial candidate in Texas in 30 years.

Reader Dismas is also from El Paso, and knows O’Rourke all too well. Here is his analysis:

You remember when Fr. Rodriguez addressed city council. In a rare event, O’Rourke, a councilman, called him back up to the podium to berate him. Here is the video

Basically O’Rourke is very charismatic. He reminds one of Bobby Kennedy. I was at that meeting but could not access the podium to respond from a medical point of view. He was absolutely wrong and egregiously so, but it would have taken just a bit of medical insight to help people see why he was dead wrong on both counts. I tried to submit an editorial in response and the newspaper refused to print it.

You name the issue. Forcing the homosexual agenda…fully on board, driving the train. Abortion? Full speed ahead. Open borders – all aboard. What else? You name it.

This guy is bad news. Much slicker than Maxine Waters, but fully in the same camp.

There are powerful forces behind this guy.

He is a stealth kinda’ guy in the same way as Obama, who came out of nowhere and the next thing you know he is President.

This guy is very bad news and a serious threat to the nascent recovery this nation has undergone since Jan 20, 2017. If he could take out one of the most stalwart conservatives in the Senate, it would be a serious blow to any hope of building a wall or reversing the always rising progressive tide.

Politico is reporting that my opponent is raising a lot of money and it’s worse than we thought. They are reporting that he has raised $3.5 million in the last TWO MONTHS. That is a ton of money.

To be clear, they are not raising money just to turn Texas blue, they are raising that money to take our shared conservative values out of Washington. My opponent has the full backing of Hollywood elites and far-left liberals.

As, I’ve told you before, I am counting on grassroots supporters like you. I don’t have Hollywood backing my campaign. I have you, and am always grateful for your support.

The money is starting to have an effect. Recent polls show that this race is getting closer and closer. The time to fight back is now. We need to do all we can now before it’s too late.

Look I know these kinds of ads come out all the time but a) this is Texas and b) I think this is one of the more serious threats to make a major surprise move to turn a red seat blue. If you are local to Texas or just concerned about the direction this nation is headed, you might consider giving some money to Cruz’ campaign. I have no compunction saying he is one of the top 2 or 3 most reliably conservative/pro-morality senators on Capitol Hill.

And keep a watch out for O’Rourke. As Dismas noted, this one is very dangerous, has major backing and ambitions, and will probably be back even if he doesn’t win this round.

I’ve been seeing more and more good catechesis from His Excellency Bishop Strickland. He’s no hardcore Trad, but his catechesis on many doctrinal subjects, especially those related to the marital act and continence, is about as solid as one will see in the Novus Ordo environment and far better than virtually any active bishop I can think of. He does endorse NFP without a concomitant warning that it should only be used in grave situations, but other than that this is generally quite solid. He states that couples who contracept are committing a serious sin and should not receive the Blessed Sacrament. As Bishop Gracida noted, virtually no other US bishop is willing to call souls to account on the matter of contraception, with Bishop Gracida claiming this the most stirring defense of Catholic Doctrine on the marital act given by any bishop in living memory. I’m not sure if that is true, but it is certain that virtually no bishop, or priest outside traditional parishes, is willing to touch this subject even slightly.

In addition, Bishop Strickland directed all of his priests to have this sermon read in their parishes on the Feast of St. John the Baptist, just as he preached it in the cathedral.

The sermon in its closing 2 minutes does sadly go off the rails with Bishop Strickland endorsing the conventional USCCB viewpoint regarding unrestrained illegal immigration, lamenting ostensible separation of children from their criminal parents, as if that hasn’t been the case throughout human history. Of course, in the vast majority of these cases, the very act of immigrating itself constitutes a separation from one parent. The solution to the immigration problem is not to encourage further law-breaking and suffering at the hands of unscrupulous smugglers who rape fully 80% of the women and female children who try to cross the US border illegally. The solution is to reform the broken Church and governments of the countries from which these people desire to emigrate. Unfortunately, in the Church of today, bishops are more or less expected and required to at least throw a bone to the “other side” whenever they take a strong stand upholding the Doctrine of the Faith. They can’t be seen to be too overtly political, not with all that wonderful tax money on the line. It’s a shame, but pretty much par for the course for the bureaucratized post-conciliar Church.

Still, overall, it’s a very good and welcome effort.

I would also add that while couples practicing NFP due to dire circumstances may indeed experience a sense of sacrifice in not being able to bring more children into the world, a word could perhaps also be spared for those couples who, in spite of financial hardship and general material poverty, go ahead and embrace God’s gift of more children in spite of the material, spiritual, and other costs. I feel this should always be promoted as the default position, so to speak, for all married Catholic couples.

I did like Bishop Strickland’s brief exhortation for older people whose children are grown, or who never had children, to assist younger couples with many children as much as possible. This is something my wife has expressed many times, how in bygone years such used to be quite common, but is today rather rare. There are some older people, especially ladies, who do make such offers from time to time, and God bless them for it.

And while marriage is sometimes difficult and constitutes a cross to bear, it is also a wonderful experience and blessing and the way God calls most all of us to live. Far too often in our sick culture, marriage is presented as a drag, as nothing more than a convention or tax break, as a source of frustration and little more than a killjoy. Often single or divorced life, with attendant incontinence and wantonness, is promoted as the chic, fun, rewarding way to be. They never show those people in their 70s, alone and forgotten, living with their 17 cats and zero children or grandchildren. It is in marriage that, as God ordains, true happiness, fulfillment, contentment, and solace can be found.

Nevertheless, great applause for Bishop Strickland for giving this sermon and being willing to touch the supposed third rail of the Church, contraception. May his example inspire far more bishops and priests to emulate him.

This has been a perpetual Novena of mine since about the first of the year: that the false Catholic Anthony Kennedy would resign from the Supreme Court this year. And now he has done so:

So the man who single-handedly legalized sodomy, kept abortion legal, legally redefined the fundamental building block of all human societies, and declared all those who see that marriage can only be between a man and a woman unscrupulous bigots, among other atrocities, will not be around to torment us any longer.

Pray for an excellent, Catholic replacement. How about Miguel Estrada, round two? He’s still only 56 years old.

I suppose Roberts will now be the weakest link, but he’s a fair bit stronger than Kennedy. Nevertheless, I doubt he has the gumption to overturn Roe. For that to happen a left of center justice will have to retire or pass away. Which, if Trump wins another term, will be exceedingly likely.

But no I should have stood on principle and not voted for him. That would have been the way to go.

With a knowing nod to commenter Michele Kerby, who certainly knows that there is a world of difference between a liberal with whom I disagree on various points but with whom dialogue is still possible, a la Carl Benjamin aka Sargon of Akkad, and a leftist.

As a case in point – and I know this is painting with a broad brush, but there are so many brush strokes the object is plainly obvious – Steven Crowder held one of his “Change My Mind” public discussion forums in Austin recently on the subject of whether there are more than two genders (Crowder taking the stand that, biologically and on numerous other fronts, there are not, and cannot be). He actually had a quite civil discussion with a self-described transsexual, but a hard left activist at my alma mater, the University of Texas, took such exception to the idea even being discussed that she sent out tweets calling for Crowder and his crew to be firebombed. Just to be certain she was not misunderstood, she included photos of their equipment van and repeated the call more than once.

Of course, the craven, cowardly, and self-seeking administration at UT took no action against this assault on the social fabric. But in a twist of fate, Steven Crowder was a few days later engaged in some mild mannered and humorous trolling, as he often does, at a meeting of the Texas State Democratic party convention, and guess who happened to be there, but the very woman who had incited violence. Crowder very bravely but with great tact and charity sought this woman out and confronted her. The record of that experience is below:

What adjectives would you use to describe the reaction of not just the woman encouraging violence, but the rest of those who showed up to try to shout down and shame Steven Crowder, denying him even the ability to defend himself from violent attack? Some that come to mind – childish, narcissistic, soulless, cult-like, cruel, self-serving, defensive, ignorant, ideologically possessed…….Can you think of a single virtue evidenced by this crowd? On the other side, do you know how hard it is to face that kind of group action and remain not only one’s composure, but humorous? I’ve done it a few times before, and did not remain as cool as Crowder did. He is a strong man in more ways than one.

These are not rank and file democrats. These are leaders and activists – agents of agitprop – in the Texas democrat party. They are among some of the most well connected people in the entire state party apparatus. These are not some weirdo extremists in a basement somewhere. These people have influence, and not a small amount of it.

The actions on display here speak volumes about the present state of the democrat party and the left in this country. It is little wonder major commentators on both sides of the aisle are speaking more and more openly of civil war.

I have been trying over the past several months to see things from the other side’s perspective. I read and listen to an increasing variety of sources, some of them very contrary to my established beliefs. But there are simply virtually no arguments on the other side. It is all invective, scare-mongering, grasping at straws and creation of a fantasy land in which it is the right that is pushing towards “violence” (by saying things they don’t like – note the hypocrisy, leftists act like actual incitements to violence are innocuous, while merely opposing leftist policy on logical grounds constitutes violence – only a child could formulate such a narcissistic justification) and about to bring down the nightmare of fascism on this nation. The evidence for this always remains fabricated, grossly exaggerated, mired in “what about-ism,” or just around the corner. What in reality has happened is that the Left has lost all sense and perspective and is deeply ensconced in an ideological bubble where only things that align with pre-existing notions are allowed to enter. That is why, in the face of massive electoral losses, at every level, over the past 8 years, the democrats have only been able to double-down and press ever further leftwards.

For goodness’ sake, how on earth can you even have a discussion or debate when one side – and it is always the same side, the “right,” to the extent such even exists in this country (in a traditional sense, one not infused with the parasite of enlightenment liberal thinking) – behaves like the most utterly spoiled, ill-mannered, screaming, flailing, out of control children you’ve ever seen? The utter insolence and solipsism is simply beyond the pale. Look at the face of that woman and her associates when confronted – no shame, no willingness to concede even the slightest humanity to the hated “other,” just blank stares and a quick degeneration into formulaic chants and mind-numbing rage once the realization that they were caught out and could say nothing in their defense sank in.

At the root of all this is the growing sense, among these apparatchiks and their masters, that the Left’s ideals, political, cultural, economic, etc., have been decisively rejected by this country. A poll out today showed that even after the incredible vitriol and rhetoric from the Democrats and their propaganda arm, the corporate media (or perhaps because of it), nearly 3/4 of Americans still firmly believe that illegal immigrants and their children should be deported. Should the flood of illegal Hispanic immigration be stopped or even significantly reduced, the Democrats, having turned hard left and growing ever more so as the years have passed, know they are politically finished at the national level, forever. The US public has, for all its flaws, retained enough sense to decisively reject the democrat program. Without, essentially, electing a new population to replace the “failed” incumbent one, the democrat’s political fortunes at the national level are exceedingly bleak, looking to pick up a few House seats, mostly on procedural grounds through jerrymandered redistricting in Pennsylvania and the practical collapse of the Republican party in California.

Thus this entire immigration debate is really about who shall rule, and has been for decades. But you knew that already.

Couple that sense of impotence and failure with a twisted religious fervor and levels of immorality that would make a late 18th century Parisian madame blush, and you have a recipe for true disaster. Leftists are already planning to “punish” the country for voting the wrong way if the democrats, as looks increasingly likely, get creamed in the midterms, by staging massive temper tantrums “days of rage.” Where things go from there is anybody’s guess, but my fear is that things will continue to go downhill at an ever-accelerating rate.

Where is the figure on the Left who has the sense, the presence, and the influence to call the raging, stampeding herd (30 million nutjobs can do a whale of a lot of damage) back from the brink? From what I can tell, virtually all the thought leaders and media/entertainment personalities on the Left only seem primed to go increasingly insane in their rhetoric and action. Twitter and other social media have helped create a perfect storm of ideological bubbles, instant gratification/denial, and extreme emotionalism.

A key problem is that the Democrat party has been undergoing leftist ideological purity tests for the past 15 years or more, very quickly driving all but the most committed left-wing extremists from any participation in all but the most basic party activities (like voting). Virtually all the old line conservative democrats and moderates have been driven from the party, and certainly from most all leadership positions. Goodness, when Dianne Feinstein starts to sound like the voice of reason, you know things have gotten bad.

Where does this end up? No one ever said the United States, as constituted since 1959 with the accession of Hawaii and Alaska to statehood, would last forever. I increasingly agree with Ace, that an amicable divorce along state lines is the best possible solution at this point. But even that could involve unbelievable violence, as those winding up on the wrong side of the line are “encouraged” to relocate a la the partition of the British Raj in 1948. We shall see. I see no solution to all this but prayer and penance, and more and more of both, but there are so few of us, and so many lost in the world and its false pleasures. The number one leisure-time spend in this country is pornography. May God have mercy on our nation, and its people.

A quick (if delayed) post for reader Tim, who knows a man stricken with cancer who then developed various complications he nearly died from. He is very weak and has a long road ahead of him, not least of which will involve further treatment for the cancer. The man’s name is Greg Latz and he is a father and head of a large family and, I am told, a quite devout Catholic. Please, if you would, in your charity, pray for his him and his family and loved ones.

Thank you!

I continue to be in a delicate situation with regard to el trabajando and this blog but I am going to try to put out something from time to time if I possibly can. This notice is weeks late but I pray it is better late, than never.